Generic feedback on the CHEN 20091 examination A J Masters

This examination was generally done well, as reflected by the 61% average
mark. I realise there was some unfortunate distractions due to the fact that the
original Actcoeff.xls program did not have the Antoine tab, so the e-learning
people produced a new version during the examination that did contain that tab.
Ill say more about this as I go through the questions.
Q1 (Online): This generally went well and I have no comments to make. The main
issue was with part 8, involving the use of actcoeff.xls to calculate the activity
coefficient of acetone in a binary liquid mixture. As this calculation did not
involve the use of Antoine coefficients (which are only needed for VLE), you get
the same answer no matter which of the two programs you use. However, if you
tried to calculate this coefficient using UNIFAC (LLEa) rather than UNIFAC (VLE),
then you do indeed get different answers. As at least one student did this and as
it was not specified in the question which UNIFAC program to use, I accepted as
correct both 1.47 and none of the above.
Q2 (written): Again this went well. For full marks in part b, you need to say that
the standard state of a gas is that of an ideal gas at 1 bar, pure substance, .
For part e), you have to work with mole-fractions. I was surprised how many
students worked with numbers of moles of concentrations, rather than mole
fractions.
Q3 (written): This also went well. Part a), the derivation of G = n1 1 + n2 2, was
done alright, but the derivations were often imprecise and sloppy, giving the
impression the student had semi-memorised the argument rather than having
understood it. There was a problem, however, with the final part of the question
which required the calculation of the composition of an azeotropic mixture. This
counted for 12 marks. 6 marks came from the calculation of activity coefficients,
and this gave 6 marks. There was no enough information in the question,
however, to do the final part of calculating the composition. Therefore full marks
were awarded for any reasonable attempt at obtaining this. By reasonable, I
mean that the calculation had to be a calculation on a non-ideal mixture (i.e. you
could not assume Raoults law).